Let’s take a snapshot of the legislative landscape as it relates to nuclear energy:
Last week, Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Jim Webb (D-Va.) introduced a climate change bill that includes a strong nuclear title, something missing from the initial draft of the Kerry-Boxer [...]
The Council on Foreign Relations has an interesting interview up with James E. Rogers, Duke Energy’s CEO. Right at the start, interviewer Roya Wolverson notes that Duke is the country’s third largest producer of carbon emissions and stands to be a “loser” in any climate [...]
If you’ve been following the health care or climate change debates, you know that your local newspaper will run a story each day whether or not anything significant happened that day because of the intense interest in the subjects. Some stories can roll on for [...]
Stewart Brand has been the subject of multiple NNN blog posts over these last several weeks: his latest book, Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto, was reviewed and the kerfuffle between Amory Lovins and Brand has been discussed in multiple posts. Earlier [...] 
Generally speaking, folks who dislike nuclear energy have lost their footing a bit because the pressing energy issue of the day – climate change – seeks solutions that nuclear energy readily provides. A fair number of former anti-nuclear advocates have put the issues [...]
Never say never, but the cap-and-trade provisions in the Kerry-Boxer climate change bill have made a number of Senators nervous about supporting it. A number of Republicans have termed it cap-and-tax and some Democrats are not inclined toward it either. For example, take this [...]
Louise Gray at the Telegraph (U.K.) clears it all up for us:
Professor Ian Plimer, a geologist from Adelaide University, argues that a recent rise in temperature around the world is caused by solar cycles and other "extra terrestrial" forces.
Extra terrestrial? That sounds [...]
You would be perfectly within your rights to give us the fishy eye if we said anything other than that nuclear energy plants are very expensive to build. Most power plants suffer this problem, because costs are so front-loaded: plants take time to build, introducing [...]
The “portfolio myth”
On page 82, Brand states that:
climate change is so serious a matter, we have to do [...]
Shall we see what’s doing in the world of nuclear energy?
Aris Candris, the CEO of Westinghouse makes the case in the Wall Street Journal:
Nuclear energy … must play a larger role in our effort to become and remain energy independent, and to [...]
One of the issues in getting the nuclear renaissance rolling – but one that is particularly responsive to capitalist imperatives – is the manufacturing of pieces that make up a plant.
After all, it’s been a long time since an American nuclear plant has [...]
We can’t really call yesterday’s passage of the Kerry-Boxer climate change bill through the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee tainted, because the bill itself is almost pristine. No amendments were added to it, nothing was removed. But the process lacked a – certain [...]
We have to give our friends in the coal industry credit – it has had a pretty good showing in the climate change bill, even if the goal of the bill builds on the hope that carbon capture and sequestration proves itself, and it survived [...]
Actually, Electricite de France (EDF) and Constellation Energy have been working together for awhile, including as partners in UniStar. But this is a different venture, lately approved by the Maryland Public Service Commission and, let us say, spectacularly good news:
EDF [...]
As opposed to Bob McDonnell below, governor-elect Chris Christie of New Jersey tilts rather away from the national Republican party on energy issues. Might not mean anything: It may just be that he has a genuine desire to move New Jersey to solar energy and [...]
The governors-elect in this case being Bob McDonnell in Virginia and Chris Christie in New Jersey. We’ll let the political blogs worry about what the win of two Republicans in previously Democratic-run states means (and that means no partisanship in the comments, please) and take [...]
When NEI announced its corporate sponsorship with the Washington Capitals one month ago, we knew that our advertising neighbors on the dasher at Verizon Center would be Papa Johns and Geico. Naturally, we were curious to know what other advertisers were trying to [...] 
The plausibility of using small nuclear reactors in situations where a full-scale reactor might be seen as overkill is an idea pushed, as you would imagine, by vendors with such reactors in their portfolios. In fact, a group of those vendors travelled around Washington during [...]
We provided you with some of the nuclear energy highlights from last week’s hearings on the Kerry-Boxer climate change bill. Now comes the finagling that makes politics so engaging for those who like to follow it, so frustrating for everyone else. This story from the [...]
David Bradish, Mark Flanagan, KB, RSM
